1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Hangul character input method to input a Hangul character into a device such as a cellular phone having 12 through 18 buttons. Further, the present invention relates to a Hangul character input device to execute the Hangul character input method, a Hangul character input program to make a computer act as the Hangul character input device and a computer media in which the Hangul character input program is stored.
2. Prior Art
A Hangul character is a phonogram expressing a syllable of the Korean-language, and one Hangul character expresses one syllable. Each Hangul character is a combination of plural Hangul components that express a vowel (including a semivowel) and a consonant. Each component is classified in an initial sound component expressing a top consonant (or expressing there is no consonant), a medium sound component expressing a vowel and a final sound component expressing a consonant at the end. A Hangul character that consists of an initial sound component and a medium sound component in up-and-down or right-and-left is a “two-component Hangul character”, and a Hangul character that combines a final sound component with a two-component Hangul character is a “three-component Hangul character”. A medium sound component determines whether the components of a two-component Hangul character are arranged up-and-down or right-and-left.
There are nineteen varieties of initial sound components, twenty-one varieties of medium sound components, and twenty-seven varieties of final sound components. Therefore, there may be 399(=19×21) varieties of two-component Hangul characters and 10,773(=19×21×27) varieties of three-component characters, 11,172 varieties of Hangul characters in total theoretically. However, only about 2,300 varieties of characters are generally used. Therefore, the Korean standard cord table KSC5601 prescribes 2,350 varieties of Hangul characters only.
In this specification, a Hangul character prescribed in the Korean standard cord table KSC5601 is referred to as a “common Hangul character” and a Hangul character except a common Hangul character is referred to as an “uncommon Hangul character”.
According to the above construction of a Hangul character, any Hangul character can be input into a computer by selecting an initial sound component, a medium sound component and a final sound component (if necessary) sequentially. It is easy to input a Hangul character to a computer having a full-keyboard because all the initial, medium or final sound components can be assigned to the respective buttons.
On the other hand, in a device having 12 through 18 buttons such as a cellular phone, since the number of buttons is smaller than the number of the Hangul components, each Hangul component must be divided into a plurality of elements (a vertical line, a horizontal line or the like) and a Hangul component is specified by a plurality of keystrokes. Varieties of the elements are smaller than varieties of Hangul components, which allows to assign the elements to a small number of buttons. The above-described Hangul character input method has been generally applied to conventional cellular phones that have e-mailing function.
However, the method for inputting a Hangul character by sequentially specifying elements of each Hangul component requires a large number of keystrokes to input a Hangul character. For example, 12 keystrokes are required at the maximum to input one Hangul character with a marketed cellular phone, which disturbed the efficiently input of a Hangul character string.